Evolve Two: Vampire Stories of the Future Undead (16 page)

Ray looked up at the worn-down, slumped shoulders of the total stranger who had just handed him back his life. The tired, broken farmer who had opened his door and let him in out of the cold and the rain. Wasted, trembling fingers raised the cup to his lips.

The scent filled his sinuses. His head spun. The blood slipped between his lips, along his tongue, cascading down his throat. Lifeforce rolled through him. Atrophied muscles sprang to life. He gasped, a drowning man breaching the surface for a second chance at life.

“Are you okay?” Barry asked, not turning around.

“I’m … much better, thanks,” Ray said. “I’m … I’m finished now. And thank you for not watching.”

Barry turned with the coffee pot in his hand and topped up his cup. He lowered himself into the chair. His eyes widened.

“Wow. The change is … well, it’s extraordinary. And about turning my back … I figured it was the decent thing to do. I figured … you know … feeding might be a private thing for you.”

“It is a private thing.”

Barry took a sip of coffee. “No one’s ever offered you blood freely before?”

Ray buried his face in his hands. He shook his head.

“Never.”

“Then … how do you get what you need? I mean, I read a lot of newspapers and listen to the radio and TV but there’s not a lot of mention about how a vampire leads his day to day life. Well, I guess in your cases it would be night to night. Do you usually take what you need by force?”

Ray’s eyes were moist when they met Barry’s. He nodded.

“The worst possible force. You must understand. We’re no stronger than you are and not really any faster. Our greatest advantage is our senses. We see and hear and feel and smell and taste so much more than you do. And we have another, beyond your five.”

“Like what? Some kind of ESP? Can you read my thoughts?”

“No. Something much more basic … more primal. We … we are able to feel your emotions, especially your fear. And … when we get one of you alone … we can amplify your fear … until you’re paralyzed.”

Barry shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Paralyzed with fear? Well, I guess that would certainly get the blood pumping.”

“Please understand. Most of us take only the small amount we need. A miniscule minority give us all a bad name.”

“Does it cause trauma, this fear your people can project?”

Ray looked away. “Very much so. Our donors are so traumatized that the truth of our feeding is often repressed and misinterpreted as something mundane, easily explained or understandable.”

Barry tilted his head. “I try not to judge, but I think ‘donor’ is a pretty liberal euphemism. I think a more accurate word might be ‘victim’. No offence.”

“I think…” Ray said. “I think the manner of our feeding might be why we have no reflection.”

Barry looked over at the kitchen window, then back at Ray.

“What are you talking about?” he asked. “I can see your reflection in the window just fine.”

Ray nodded. “But I can’t. I think it must be some kind of defense mechanism. If you had to terrify and traumatize someone every time you had to eat, you wouldn’t be able to look at yourself in a mirror, either.”

“So you really can’t see yourself?”

“No.”

Barry took another sip of coffee. “You know, you’re not the first vampire I’ve encountered.”

“Really?”

“A couple of weeks back. It was around this time of night. Chores were all finished and I was going through the papers like I always do. We dairy farmers are by necessity creatures of habit. Anyway, I’d picked up that flashlight there from the hardware store with a few other things the previous week. I don’t really know why. I guess the stuff I read in the paper. Hardly a day goes by that there isn’t a story about some poor bastard with his throat torn out and not a drop of blood to be found.”

“As I said,” Ray said, one hand raised defensively, “those monsters represent a tiny minority of my kind.”

“And I believe you. You wouldn’t have known it, though, from the man who came running through that front door over there, fangs bared and growling like an animal. Everything was pure instinct. The flashlight was sitting next to my coffee cup. It was in my hand and turned on before I really knew what was happening. The man skittered to a halt just there—” Barry gestured with his cup toward the patch of removed linoleum. “—and he flamed and blistered and melted.”

“You can’t be blamed for defending yourself,” Ray said, catching the grief in Barry’s voice.

“No. And if it happened again, I figure it would end the same way. You notice I answered the door tonight with the damn flashlight in my hand. No — it wasn’t killing him that upsets me, though that in itself was upsetting. What really bothers me is what happened after.”

“After?”

“I called the police and told them what happened. You know what they said? ‘So why are you calling us?’ That’s what they said. They claimed I hadn’t killed a person, I’d exterminated a pest. I told them he certainly screamed like a person. They said it wasn’t their concern. I asked them who I should contact regarding the charred remains on my kitchen floor and how the body would be disposed of. The cop on the phone told me once more it wasn’t a police matter and most people were depositing remains in garbage bags and dropping them off at the dump. The dump, for Christ’s sake. I told her I had never been more ashamed to be a human being. She hung up on me.”

“You … you didn’t…”

“Hell, no. I did need to cut the linoleum to … well, to get him off the floor but, no — I didn’t take him to the dump. He’s buried in the side yard. I planted a tree over his grave. There was no ID or anything, no name to put to the man. I had no idea if he had a religion or not, what kind of a marker would be appropriate. I figure you can’t do much better than a tree as a grave marker. Universally non-offensive, a tree.”

Barry took another sip of coffee.

“We’ve all changed, you know,” he said, “since the Pandemic. We’ve grown mean and petty and lost any sense of what it’s like to be a good neighbor.”

Ray tilted his chin toward the cupboards by the sink. “Is that what the shotgun is for? In case some of your fellow humans are less than neighborly?”

Barry’s answer was all too matter of fact. “The shotgun is for me.”

“For you?”

“Every night I come in here after milking and chores. I make a pot of coffee and read the papers. I read all four, cover to cover. I try to make sense of what’s happened to our world. Everything’s so hopeless. The world is this giant mess. Then we — humanity — discover we’re co-existing with another intelligent species and what do we do? We make lethal flashlights, UV Laser pointers and sentry lights called Vamp Zappers that you can buy at your local Wal-Mart for $32.99. And that, compounded on everything else that happened, is why the shotgun sits loaded by my sink.”

Barry reached back, grabbed the gun and laid it across the table between them.

“I took a hacksaw to the barrel,” he said, sliding his fingertip along it. “Now it’s the perfect length to wedge against the seat of my chair between my legs so that it nestles firmly under my chin. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt that rough sawn edge under my jaw.”

“Jesus…” Ray whispered.

“And the only thing that keeps me from pulling the trigger, the only thing that keeps my brains from being splattered all over the ceiling is my goddamn cows.”

“Your cows?”

“Goddamn cows need to be milked. Nowadays the milk truck only comes every three days. Cows can’t skip a milking. If I’m not there to take care of them it could be three days — six milkings — before the truck comes and the driver discovers me sitting in here. Do you have any idea the agony a Holstein would endure if she missed six milkings? So, as I’m sitting here, thumb on the trigger, shotgun under my chin, I think if I just let the cows loose in the barnyard one of my neighbors will notice and take care of things. And that’s true. But, by the time I get to that point, the despair is so bleak I just can’t muster the will to go all the way out to the barn and turn them out. So the shotgun slides out from under my chin, gets put back by the counter and I slink over to the daybed and cry myself to sleep.”

“And yet,” said Ray, “even with a despair that I could sense at the end of your driveway — even with all that you’ve personally lost — even after you’ve been attacked in your own home by one of my kind — you open your house and your … hospitality—” He lifted the empty eggcup. “—to a stranger. To a vampire.”

Barry shrugged. “It’s the way I was raised. What can I say? I guess I look upon vampirism in the same way I view homosexuality or vegetarianism.”

Ray laughed. “How’s that?”

“I don’t really understand any of them. But, just because I don’t understand them, that doesn’t really give me a right to judge, does it? They’re all just different ways of getting by in the world.”

“And that’s what it’s all about nowadays, isn’t it? Getting by? For your people … and for my kind.”

Barry looked into the bottom of his empty coffee cup. “You know,” he said, “until that vampire came running through my front door, I never really gave your kind much thought. Afterwards … well, I got to thinking on how difficult it must be … how desperate your people must be getting. And how unfriendly it is out there for you.”

“Is that why you let me in?”

Barry considered this for a moment. “Nah. You had the decency to knock. You needed help. Really, what else could I have done? How are you feeling, by the way?”

Ray’s hands came up from the table and he turned them. They had lost some of their pallor. The skin seemed less loose. His fingers no longer shook. “I don’t know what to say. You’ve given me my life back. How can I repay something like that?”

“You can’t and you don’t have to. I had a little something you needed and it didn’t hurt me any to give it up.”

Ray sat contemplating as an awkward silence filled the room. Finally, glad to feel that strength had returned to his legs, he rose to his feet. “Will you let me try to repay you for everything you’ve done?”

“There’s no need.”

“Do I have your permission to try?”

“I suppose. What do you have in mind?”

Ray moved to Barry’s side of the table.

“Should I get up?” Barry asked.

“No,” Ray said. “Seated is better, I think. Remember what I told you about how we can dial up someone’s fear.”

“Yeah,” Barry said with a hint of uncertainty.

“Well, I’ve never tried this before. I doubt anyone ever has, but as I sat there across the table, I got to thinking: What if I could dial it back?”

“But I’m not afraid.”

“You’re telling me. You don’t have a hint of fear about you. I suppose after the worst thing imaginable has already happened, there’s not a lot left to fear. But I’m not talking about fear.”

“What then?”

“Your despair. You have so much. What if I could take some of it away, even if for just a little while?”

“I’d be a fool to say no.”

Ray lifted his left hand. “I’ll need to touch your face.” Barry nodded. “Remember, I don’t know if this will work.”

Ray’s fingertips came to rest on Barry’s cheek. At first Barry felt them as icy yet clammy, but after a few seconds they seemed to warm.

Ray breathed deeply and concentrated. Instead of projecting a wave of anxiety, he focused on Barry’s overwhelming despair. For just an instant Ray felt the entirety of Barry’s loss, the sum of his suffering, the depth of his loneliness. His knees grew weak until finally he broke the contact and staggered back to his chair.

“Jesus,” Ray whispered. “How do you cope?”

Barry gave his head a shake. “Most days, not very well.”

Ray waded through the lingering effects of Barry’s grief, rubbing his hands over his face, and then said, “I’m sorry it didn’t work.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

With a crestfallen shrug, Barry nodded at the bundle of clothes he’d brought down after shaving.

“You look about my size.” he said. “There’s a bathroom and shower just off the living room if you’d care to get cleaned up. I need to say goodnight. It’s getting late and 5:30 is chore time. I don’t know if you’re planning to move on tonight, but you’re welcome to spend the day here in safety. I’ve got a root cellar and a sleeping bag. It’s not much, but it’ll be dark.”

“I am in your debt.”

“Think nothing of it. You may not have been able to siphon off any of my sadness, but I am genuinely glad to have made your acquaintance. Which reminds me … I never did catch your name.”

The vampire extended his hand.

“My name is Ray.”

“And I’m Barry,” said the farmer. “I’m really pleased you stopped by.”

* * * * *

David Beynon is a writer of speculative fiction who lives in Fergus, Ontario with his wife, two kids, a Golden Retriever and what increasingly appears to be an immortal cat. David’s novel,
The Platinum Ticket
, has been shortlisted for The Terry Pratchett Anywhere But Here, Anywhen But Now First Novel Contest.
Symbiosis
is his first published story, about which he says: “
Symbiosis
arose from a news story about thermal imaging used to screen for spiking fevers of clientele at a nightclub in Singapore. I wondered what they would do if they discovered someone registering as room temperature.”